Time By Maya Rhodan 11/14/2018
The number of asylum seekers has skyrocketed. In 2008, according to federal data, fewer than 5,000 people apprehended by border agents expressed fear of returning home, thereby triggering the asylum process. Ten years later, that number has soared to more than 97,000—a nearly 2,000% increase. The figure has doubled in the past two years alone, driven by the arrivals of families and unaccompanied minors.
Some immigration-rights advocates explain this uptick by pointing at world events—environmental devastation, gang activity and political volatility in much of Central America. They say that the U.S., a nation founded by religious refugees, is built on a proud tradition of sheltering those facing persecution and that we should make room for as many as we can, whatever the source of their fear.
President Donald Trump and many of his supporters see things differently. They argue that our asylum laws are being exploited, that the migrants who file for refugee status are only pretending to flee oppression as a way to sneak into the country through a legal back door. “[Asylum] is an escape hatch from the laws that Congress has passed regulating immigration,†says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for lower immigration.
Until the 1940s, the U.S. did not have a policy governing the admission of would-be refugees: -federal laws didn’t distinguish between immigrants and asylum seekers. But after World War II left 7 million people uprooted in Europe, U.S. lawmakers were forced to act. In 1948, Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act, opening America’s immigration door to some 350,000 refugees from Europe over the next four years. In 1967, the U.S. signed the U.N. refugee protocols, voluntarily committing to protections for refugees.
Those protocols define refugees as people who are outside their country and afraid to return because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on religion, race, nationality or membership in a particular social or political group. But refugee status was for decades granted unequally through loopholes and exceptions to politically sympathetic groups, like those fleeing communist regimes in Hungary or Cuba, or escaping the crisis created by the Vietnam War. It wasn’t until the Refugee Act of 1980 that Congress created a comprehensive system for granting asylum in the U.S. If the criteria outlined in the U.N. refugee protocol were met, any applicant could be welcomed in the U.S.
In practice, that system often kicks in when people like the Fredys come face to face with immigration authorities and express a fear of returning to their home country. A trained U.S. official then interviews them to judge whether their fears are believable. In fiscal year 2018, roughly 89% of asylum seekers passed this initial “credible fear†screening, according to federal data. But the odds narrow from there. Asylum seekers are assigned a date to plead their case in immigration court, which imposes a high burden of proof. This year, judges granted asylum in only 17% of cases decided in immigration court where migrants had passed credible-fear interviews.
What happens to asylum seekers who are not granted refugee status? That’s where the political fight really heats up. The Trump Administration says the problem is that after asylum seekers pass their credible-fear interviews, they are released from custody to await their date in immigration court—a -system Trump calls “catch and release.†With a backlog of 791,821 cases, new court dates are often months or years in the future. In fiscal year 2018, immigration judges completed just over 34,000 cases originating with a credible-fear referral, according to federal data. In nearly a third of those cases—10,534—migrants failed to show up at their scheduled court hearing.
More:
http://time.com/longform/asylum-seekers-border/
